The following is a very rough draft. I’m still reviewing a couple of movies that may possibly make it to this list, and the order is still very temporary. As far as trilogies (or sagas, in the case of Star Wars), I listed my favorite one, much like my Top Ten Video Games, in parentheses. In these cases, I highly enjoyed the entire series (or felt that the series as a whole represented masterful film-making, while any one alone wasn’t particularly special), but just listed my favorite one. In other trilogies where I just loved one movie out of them, I will just list that movie without any parentheses, like in the case of Godfather.

V For Vendetta

Adaptation

Pan’s Labyrinth

The Matrix (Reloaded)

Butterfly Effect

21 Grams

Mulholland Drive

Lord of the Rings (Return of the King)

Godfather: Part I

Swordfish

EDIT 08-26-07: I made some more modifications, adding a few new movies and also removing some. I really want to only focus on movies that I feel really matter in the grand scheme of things: where the movie transcended the screen and tugged at my very existence.

Yes, The Butterfly Effect is a very difficult movie to understand, because of all the crazy implications of changing things in the past. The WikiPedia entry about the movie highlights some inconsistencies with the movie, which can really make your head spin.

I think the word you are looking for is “special effects”. That is what we call the computer-generated images in movies, and things such as explosions.